Does BakoSaint have a point or is just Loomis syndrome.

I think it is interesting to take Mickey Loomis' record as a 'respected' GM and compare it to the late Al Davis who has become a laughing stock but was actually a much more successful early career GM than Loomis.

Mickey Loomis has been GM of the Saints 2002-Present.

Al Davis was Owner and GM of the Raiders from 1966-2011.

Mickey Loomis led the Saints to 1 Super Bowl victory in the 2009 Season.

Al David led the Raiders to 5 Super Bowl appearances and from 1976-1983 3 super bowl victories.

Al Davis' first 15 years as GM the Raiders had a winning record every season.

Mickey Loomis's first 15 years as GM the Saints had 6 winning seasons, three .500 seasons, five 7-9 seasons, and a 3-13 season.

Mickey Loomis cannot be let go because he is so amazing because we won 1 Super Bowl 13 years ago and the talent to do that never diminishes and I don't know how bad we had it before so we should keep him until he drops dead.

Al Davis led the Raiders to 3 Super Bowl victories in 8 years during the 1976-1983 seasons. He stayed on as GM until he dropped dead. Even though he was a much more talented GM than Loomis with much better results to that point, the Raiders did not win any Super Bowls in the next 28 years after his last victory, so they probably kept him too long, even if they did not win a championship before him.

During the era that Al Davis was a successful GM, the most Super Bowls any team had won was 4 by the Steelers vs Davis winning 3 in that era.

During the era that Mickey Loomis was a 'successful' GM the most Super Bowls any team won was 6 by the Patriots vs Loomis winning 1 in that era. Several other teams won twice in the era and changed GMs.

Al Davis faced adversity as GM when his young Super Bowl winning coach he hired, John Madden, suddenly retired. He replaced Madden with risky first time hire in Tom Flores who had a winning season his first year on the job and won a Superbowl his second.

Mickey Loomis faced adversity as GM when his young Super Bowl winning coach he hired, Sean Payton, suddenly retired. He replaced Payton with Dennis Allen, seen as a safe hire, a career .222 coach who had previously been hired to coach the Raiders over Al Davis' dead body, and Allen has us at 3-7, the same record he started both of his 4-12 seasons with the post-Al Raiders with.

Mickey Loomis was not a football guy but had skills with finance.

Al Davis was a football guy a successful college coach and NFL assistant, and was not a finance guy per se, but personally built a business that is now worth billions of dollars.

My point in posting all this is that even a GM who had success in the past can be given too much time to repeat the magic. Davis had a good excuse because he was also owner, its hard to fire yourself. Gayle has less of an excuse, Loomis may be a friend, he may be like family or like a son, but she does not have to fire herself. Davis was an amazing GM early in his career. Perhaps Loomis was once a good GM. But skill fades. The league changes. Old dogs can't always win with their old tricks. There is a time to move on.

After winning his final Super Bowl, Davis gave himself 28 years trying unsuccessfully to win another, if you take that 28 years and divide it by the 3 Super Bowls he won before that, you could say that in his mind each of those Super Bowls bought him just under 10 years of time to try again. By contrast Loomis won 1 Super Bowl as GM and has been given 13 Years afterward trying to repeat. He has run our salary cap and draft position in the ground. If Davis had lived to give himself 13 years per previous Super Bowl victory to remain on as GM, his last Super Bowl was in 1983 so add 3x13 = 39 years to 1983 and you get 2022. If we keep Mickey Loomis as GM in 2023 based on his Super Bowl in 2009, it is no better than if Al Davis were still alive and had kept himself on as GM from 1983 to 2023 based on his 3 Super Bowls ending in 1983.

Another comparison for Mickey Loomis is Jerry Reese. Reese won 2 super bowls in 11 years as GM of the New York Giants from 2007-2017 with Eli Manning, a good QB but clearly inferior to Drew Brees. Late in Reese's tenure a young brilliantly talented receiver named Victor Cruz suffered a series of devistating injuries. The Giants cut Cruz. The next year Cruz retired and Reese was fired. The Giants did not decide to give Cruz more years to recover and give Reese 13 years since his last Super Bowl victory in with an extension through 2024, or perhaps more appropriately by the Loomis standard 13 years per Super Bowl victory with an extension through 2037. Jerry Reese is actually 7 years younger than Mickey Loomis, has twice as many Super Bowl wins, won the Super Bowl 2 years more recently, and is available to hire as GM right now. If we wanted to cling to past success, he would be better than Loomis.

I get it that we had it rough before Mickey Loomis, Sean Payton, and Drew Brees, rougher than the Raiders and Giants in those days. But now that Payton and Brees are gone, it sure looks like they were the main ingredients for success not Loomis, who also led us to not much from 2002-2005. Its great that Loomis hired Payton, but Al Davis hired Madden, Flores, and Gruden who all won Super Bowls, and that did not make Davis a great GM still 13 years after his last Super Bowl win. Skill fades. Time changes. I know that the early Saints before Loomis were worse than the Raiders before Davis or the Giants before Reese. But if past failure makes us accept present mediocrity and failure, and we let that past failure guide us to be afraid of change, that past failure will just lead to future failure. What the Saints were in the 60's, 70's, and 90's does not matter today. Today we play by the same rules with the draft and salary cap as every other team including the Raiders and Giants regardless of whether they were better in those long past eras. Randy Mueller, Jim Haslett, and Aaron Brooks led us to our first playoff win but only when we cleaned house and got rid of all 3 did we take a step to a next and more successful era. Just because their era was better than the previous one did not mean the next era would not be even better. Likewise, we should not cling to a past era now. It's great Loomis contributed to an era where we won one ring 13 years ago. It's nice than Allen was a good coordinator at the end of that era. But it is foolish to cling to 2009 now. The best way to remember Loomis' contribution is with a statue outside the stadium, not with a faded talent lingering in the front office. Because just like Al Davis, we see all talent fades.

I think you forget how bad things were after Katrina for the team. It was harder for us to get free agents. There is also far more parity in the league now and the teams are more numerous. A championship now is worth more than one in the 80s IMO because it's harder.

It seems like bako has only been a fan for a few years and forgets the hard times.